Social Networks – Getting Started

Social networks are in important part of spreading the word about your product or company. The benefit of a strong social network campaign is that you eventually reach a point where you don’t need to pursue followers or build an audience. Eventually you will have so many followers or likes, that everything you say will be instantly shared with thousands of people and all you did was press “send.” Your audience will eventually do all the work for you and you will only have to write the posts. Now, how do we get from an egg, to a recognized brand? A blank page, to being on everyone’s home screen? The answer? Time, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.

Getting started with Twitter can be a daunting task. You can send out dozens of tweets and not get a single notification. Like any social network, Twitter takes time to build an audience. There a few ways to get your account rolling, one of which is being active. An account that tweets often, and with purpose, gets more followers. By using websites like Hootsuite or Bufferapp, you can have multiple tweets in a queue that will automatically be posted over time. Doing this will keep your account active while you are away. Keeping an eye on what is trending is also a great way to attract followers. Including the trending hash-tags or phrases in your tweets, puts your business or product where the most people will see it. Also staying current with things like #ThrowbackThursday are also a good way to reach the average user on Twitter. Another good way to gain followers is to search for your product or something related to it, and reply to whoever sent that tweet. For example, if your company sells furniture and someone tweets “I need a couch”, send them a tweet about your company and how you can help. This will be a crucial part in building your following.

Facebook is very similar to Twitter in terms of getting “likes” (the Facebook version of followers.) You need to be active and posting regularly about your business. On Facebook, images seem to be a very popular strategy with larger companies, and less text based posts. Facebook has some challenges with getting likes. You can start by creating your page, linking to your website, and choosing a profile picture and banner image. You can then start posting, and commenting on other posts, but as far as finding people who are looking for your product, it can be more difficult. Like all social networks, likes begin to snowball, and you get more and more everyday as long as you stay active and creative with your posts.

In the end, you can merge your Facebook and Twitter accounts and tweets will get posted to Facebook and vice-versa. The process of building a following takes time and patience, but in the end it is very rewarding. Humor and creativity help to get followers and likes. People respond well to a company or product that has a sense of humor behind it. Follow these tips, stay motivated and you will be well on your way to having a significant presence in the digital marketing world.

Nick joined Wakefly in 2014 as a web developer. He graduated from Bay Path R.V.T high school in 2013 after completing the programming and web development course offered there. He is currently pursuing his A.S degree at QCC in Worcester. During his time at Wakefly he has done work with Kentico, WordPress and MVC. His skillset consists primarily of front end languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, with some ASP.NET and C#.